To understand the person, we must also understand the social worlds they inhabit. Sociology attends to the patterned ways human beings organize, relate, belong, exclude, labour, govern, and make meaning together. It reveals how identity, distress, agency, and possibility are shaped by roles, institutions, norms, histories, and structures that extend beyond the individual.

Habitus, field, and capital

Bourdieu helps explain how social structures become embodied as dispositions, expectations, tastes, and practical ways of moving through the world. People do not simply choose in space; they act within fields shaped by power, history, class, and forms of capital.